For startups and mid-size businesses, winning enterprise-level customers can be a game-changer for business prospects and financial performance. However, with new opportunity comes a new challenge – to provide enterprise-grade software services on demand, otherwise known as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

This is the situation that 9Lenses, an emerging Independent Software Vendor (ISV), found themselves in when they initially began the search for a Cloud Services Provider. After experiencing rapid growth, 9Lenses was outgrowing its hardware infrastructure, and was looking to expand globally to offer its organizational intelligence platform to customers via the cloud. With clients in the Global 50 – including HP itself – 9Lenses CEO Edwin Miller knew that he needed a solution that could meet the company’s new global needs while also being flexible and secure.

The risk/reward conundrum

An IT infrastructure change such as moving operations to the Cloud comes with significant risks to business outcomes if not handled properly. With this in mind, Miller was careful to look for a strategic partner that would ask the “right questions” to implement a new solution, which would seamlessly integrate with their current model while also enabling future growth.

Enter HP Enterprise Services (ES). The HP team’s first step upon beginning work with 9Lenses was to guide them through a cloud ROI analysis to help determine the best solution for their business needs. Ultimately, 9Lenses found that migrating to a SaaS model would provide three big-business benefits:

Accelerate speed-to-market

Reduce complexity

Limit security risks for their clients.

The HP Helion difference

Following a successful proof-of-concept trial, 9Lenses chose HP Helion SaaS Accelerator to migrate its cloud environment to HP Helion Managed Virtual Private Cloud. Within the first month of its HP cloud deployment, 9Lenses doubled its infrastructure; and just one month later, 9Lenses added a second environment to meet booming customer demand.

100 percent growth

2014 is shaping up to be a record year for 9Lenses. Since its activation with HP, 9Lenses has experienced more than 100 percent client growth – and is currently in the process of adding a third Cloud environment to build on this momentum.